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“I don’t have to tell you what the big issue in Washington is: it’s the shutdown, and it’s ridiculous,” said the freshman senator. “I voted to keep the government open, but over 8,000 Alaskans have been furloughed. They’re shutting down logging in the national forests. Head Start programs will start closing at the end of the month. Even the King Crab season cannot open without officials to sign off on permits and quarters. All because a small band of knuckleheads are holding the country hostage over the health care law.”

Alaska’s Senate race is certain to be one of the marquee contests of 2014. Begich narrowly won in the red state in 2008, so he’s worked hard to get out front on the inevitable attack ads over his vote for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, in 2010.

“I know the law isn’t perfect, but my staff and my family and I will all be on it,” he says in the new ad, referring to the exchanges. “And I’ve been working, for instance, to make it better for small businesses...But we have to stop this endless cycle of threatening the economy every six months just because one side disagrees with the other.”

The state has the third highest percentage of federal employees, behind only Maryland and Hawaii.

The shutdown has already become something of a litmus test in the contentious Republican primary to challenge Begich.

Tea party favorite Joe Miller, who won the nomination in 2010 but lost to the Republican incumbent in a write-in campaign, has previously advocated shutting down the government as a means to hobble the health care law. His campaign has slammed rivals for not being as firm on the issue.

Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell has said he opposes a shutdown but praised Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and said he would work with him to defund the law.

Dan Sullivan, a former George W. Bush appointee who stepped down as the natural resources commissioner to join the race any time now, has still not said publicly what he thinks.

Asked in a Monday radio interview about whether President Barack Obama could be impeached, Miller said he was “quite surprised” that more people have not floated the idea.

“Who knows whether the House would do something like that,” he said on The Glen Biegel Show. “I do think the president playing politics with the future of the country, which is effectively what he’s doing, is an impeachable offense, if in fact he decides that out of his pride he’s not going to allow a partial funding bill to go through just because he’s dug his feet in.”